How Bon Jovi's David Bryan got to Broadway with MEMPHIS

Sunday

Mar 27, 2011 at 12:01 AMMar 27, 2011 at 9:15 AM

The road to Memphis - just announced to tour Columbus next season - was a long one for musician David Bryan. "It took me eight years to get to Broadway, so for me it doesn't feel like an explosion. It feels like a slow burn," Bryan said. A founding musician with Bon Jovi who continues to tour with the gold-record group, Bryan made his Broadway debut last season as composer of the bluesy and rockin' score of the 2010 Tony winner for best musical.

(Caption: Bon Jovi musician David Bryan, who won the 2010 Tony award for best score for his Broadway debut with the musical Memphis. Credit: Linda Rowe)

So how did a guy who grew up in New Jersey, studied classical music for 15 years, played in a 10-piece band as a teenager and toured the world as a rocker wind up winning the 2010 Tony award for best score in his Broadway debut? It's a long story, but Bryan was happy to share it in a Dispatch interview.

The road to Memphis - just announced to tour Columbus next season - was a long one for musician David Bryan. "It took me eight years to get to Broadway, so for me it doesnít feel like an explosion. It feels like a slow burn," Bryan said. A founding musician with Bon Jovi who continues to tour with the gold-record group, Bryan made his Broadway debut last season as composer of the bluesy and rockin' score of the 2010 Tony winner for best musical.

(Caption: Bon Jovi musician David Bryan, who won the 2010 Tony award for best score for his Broadway debut with the musical Memphis. Credit: Linda Rowe)

So how did a guy who grew up in New Jersey, studied classical music for 15 years, played in a 10-piece band as a teenager and toured the world as a rocker wind up winning the 2010 Tony award for best score in his Broadway debut? It's a long story, but Bryan was happy to share it in a Dispatch interview.

"As a teen-ager, I started listening to the Beatles and rock and roll, then gravitated towards the bluesier side," Bryan said. By the age of 16, Bryan was playing in a 10-piece rock band. "We had a horn section and we played a lot of Knock on Wood and Hold On, Iím Coming, those kind of soul songs." But Bryan also studied classical music for 15 years, and he still fondly remembers seeing his first big musical - Fiddler on the Roof - in 1975 for his bar mitzvah. All that gave him the breadth and training to later consider the possibility of composing a Broadway score for a musical about the early days of rock 'n roll amid the bluesy, jazzy Memphis, Tennessee scene. "I've always loved the urgency and the honesty of the blues," he said.

Bryan collaborated on the bluesy musical with Joe DiPietro (All Shook Up; Over the River and Through the Woods; I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change)/ "We had so much fun writing it," Bryan said. "But only when we put it in front of people, we saw we had something special... This is the birth of rock and roll. The story is talking about the racial situation in the 1950s."

At the center of the story is a white disc jockey who loves black music - and falls in love with a black singer. His enthusiasm for R&B, blues and African American-inspired rock and roll leads him to introduce the music to a mainstream white audience in Memphis - first on the radio and later on television. But with racial prejudice a big issue in the 1950s, the DJ and the singer struggle for success - both in their careers and their relationship. "The form of the musical is hard to get right. There are so many elements to it," Bryan said. "But the main thing is what Joe had done: He searched for two years for a collaborator and he didnít want a theater composer. He wanted a rock and roll composer, somebody who could write songs in the style but not mimic the style." That was Bryan. "I didn't just write 50 songs. A lot of shows have tried this, but they didn't have authentic rock. It's more than just the structure; it's the passion." Bryan's goal, he said, was to write rock and roll songs, with a chorus and melodies that repeat, that fit the story but also could be played on Top 40 radio. "It just made it feel more authentic," he said. "In a rock song, you do tell a story. The chorus is the main theme and the verses tell the story. You have to learn to tell a whole story in five sentences. So you learn the art of conciseness. Adapting it to the stage stretches it." "Iím also a performer. So I can appreciate the other factors. Itís intense. Itís rock and roll intense, and that you canít really teach someone." "Ours is an original score and original script, so itís a combination of rock with what Broadway used to be. And people have applauded us for what weíve done," he said.

(Caption: Montego Glover as the singer Felicia and Chad Kimball as Huey the DJ in the Broadway musical Memphis. Photo credit:: Joan Marcus scene with the two central characters from the Broadway production of Memphis. Credit: Joan Marcus)

Working together since 2001, Bryan and DiPietro quickly bonded as two "Jersey boys" with a similar upbringing. While developing Memphis, they also worked on Toxic Avenger, a smaller musical that made it to opening night first off-Broadway. That show won the Outer Critics Circle award for best off-Broadway musical.

Meanwhile, early versions of Memphis were being tried out with regional audiences. "We learned from the talkbacks at regional theaters with older audiences," Bryan said. "In the 1950s, these audiences were in their 20s, so this was their time. We learned how embarrassed they were of how racist America was then - and how far we've come."

IF YOU GO Memphis continues in an open-ended run on Broadway.at the Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St., New York. For tickets, visit Telecharge at www.telecharge.com Memphis will tour Columbus May 28 to June 3, 2012, at the Ohio Theatre. for more information, visit www.BroadwayAcrossAmerica.com